The Unwanted Children of Lord Voldemort
by Difyr Dilys
Summary: New Chapter! After the last battle, 'goodness' has sunk as low as their adversaries prevails. Two are left from the Dark Lord's side to reap the effects. Bellatrix and Rabastan Lestrange, R & R
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: If I owned what I was writing about, I'd be the richest woman in England.

Author's Note: I've fixed the tense errors and have decided to continue this story at a relaxed pace, switching points of view each chapter. This is something I've had stewing in my head for a long while.

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We've been tromping around the English countryside for weeks it seems. A day entails about a week on our time. I say our though I doubt my sister in law has any concept of time.

I should take that back. Her insanity seems to have gauged the moment my brother died and acknowledges it each day. You could set your filthy muggle watch by her sobs. I remember pulling her away from the body. I can't imagine feeling that much affection for someone, that it would utterly break your mind to lose them. But to each their own.

She was singing softly. I remember that tone from another instance I just blundered into. For a Death Eater spy, in my personal life I always end up in these horridly awkward situations.

But at any rate their baby had been weak: a little boy who'd been barely four pounds and two months early. I remember Rodolphus has personally murdered the doctor who'd delivered him. Rondonvain was his name – the child I mean.

Bellatrix had been hysterical for days, laughing and whimpering at the same time with these horrific shrieks that can be likened to the time I had to fraternize with banshees to bring them over to the cause.

Oh right. The cause. The reason we all risked and lost many lives. This was the cause we'd grown up with. I remember when Rodolphus had been initiated, our parents had been so proud. They didn't give a shit about his astounding grades or the fact he was Quidditch captain for three years: it was this that mattered. The only consolation they'd given he and Bellatrix when their grandson had just sort of slipped away in the night was an anxious 'you'll have another right?'.

Bellatrix's body, I think for spite never allowed her to become pregnant again. It was a bloody mystery that got Rodolphus cut out of the Lestrange fortunes.

The money for a time was supposed to go to me. I didn't care either way, I did well enough on my own with a bit of a buying/selling trade going for 'medieval artifacts'. Their respect of their sons shifted, only slightly. The sort of slightness that could be detected at knowing looks during dinner parties, the sort of affection that my mediocre child and teenaged self had been deprived was all shoved upon my adult self. It was about as welcomed as the uncomfortable pauses and the times that say, Bellatrix was verbally attacked by our dear old mother, or how Rodolphus was a 'blood traitor' for staying with her. The nerve, when our father had done nothing but praise her father Avarius Black for this very lucrative marriage.

They never wavered though. Crazy as they both were, or seemed at times, that bond never broke. Comparing it to my own life, theirs was a roaring success. I too ended up cut out of that will for ending up with three daughters, with a timid French witch who hated my apathy, and even more than that the bit part I played with the Death Eaters. It was mostly as their spy in the Ministry, and when my cover was blown there, I was fully a liaison between them and the dangerous halfbreeds of the world. You know, werewolves, vampires, merfolk, veela... those bloody banshees.

She's started it again. Must be nine-seventeen on the dot. I don't know where we are, she barely moves of her own volition except to crumple into a black heaving mess. I put my hand on her shoulder the first time, I lost a front tooth for that. You can imagine the fit she pitched when I attempted to clean his blood off her.

Looking at her I think of silly things. I'm not developing feelings for her, that would be wrong and I could never disrespect Rodolphus in that manner, but for some reason I think back to when we were in that sixteen to nineteen range. She'd had a bit of a coming out party when she hit the lower end of that integer, in a time when we were still aristocracy and pureblood wasn't synonymous with 'inbreed'. She'd been astounding to the eyes really, I've seen veela that would hiss with jealousy. People say she wasn't capable of happiness, her soul was too twisted and her momentary elation came purely from murder. Bellatrix had looked happy that evening, coming down that long glimmering stairwell with her sister Narcissa trailing behind her who had been helping her get ready. Respectfully she was dressed down, Narcissa had already a fiancé eighteen and this was Bella's evening.

She's never been the horrifically polite type, but it was more an endearing quality to our family (before the dead baby and her fits she tended to take afterwards) and of course her own. She was never like that in say, the company of Grindelwald Jr. and it made her inner circle feel... something like blessed she'd be so goddamn honest when people rarely were in those days. But at any rate, she'd entirely ignored any male attention that evening except for my brother. I can't lie, I spent most of that night drinking with a halfblood who was gaining more status as time went on so that his drunken mudblood father was more and more forgotten. I can't say anything wasn't cultivated there, but it was long forgotten. At any rate, that four eyed pissant Potter had the honors of doing away with him.

That was a huge surprise. Harry couldn't have cursed his way out of a paper bag compared to Severus's skills. It wasn't a secret it had been Severus's wand, and not Narcissa's useless son as it should have been, to cast the Killing Curse on that old fool Dumbledore. I don't know how he managed that, and to this moment I doubt he did. It would be just like Severus to think it more shrewd to save himself and rejoin those that did survive... perhaps for a retaliation, perhaps for something more after we pick up the pieces of the Dark Lord. After all, he never really was big on those dramatic last stands, sticking around for them or instigating them either one.

Here we are Severus, here we are the survivor's the final stand where good triumphed over evil and all that rot. We're mourning our dead, Bellatrix is laying still and little girl laughter's in my head. I remember crossing the threshold of hell. The Aurors had made an example out of my family. Eva could've held her own against one maybe two Aurors. I know she didn't kill any of them out of her goddamn moral scruples she felt so high and mighty with. "And look what the did Eva!" I don't realize I said, or rather shouted that out loud as mental images of our daughters twisted and bloody in the fucking parlor came to mind.

"So the old ass has a heart," Bellatrix mutters, looking up from her kneeling positions. Her robes, the consistency of drapery that were standard issue basically for Death Eaters still cling around her emaciated body as she shivers without chill.

"What?"

"You hate her."

"No."

"You miss her?"

I don't know why I need to defend her, but pacing up and down a moonlit knoll that apparently we're going to sleep on like filthy fucking cattle, the verbal shit just flows, "She was always telling me what I did was wrong. Why she stayed I'll never know... she'd say I was a good father. A good father who leaves, who loves Voldemort more than his children, and leaves them to... to that! What kind of goddamn sense does that make BELLATRIX STOP FUCKING LAUGHING AT ME!"

I'm on top of her, hands around her throat and she just convulses with laughter. "Because Rabastan you stupid git! You lived your life with three prized daughters who would eventually grow up and marry wealthy Death Eaters who'd defend them for you! You think my father gave a rat's ass... you think that if I died, with Narcissa and Andromeda he'd mourn?"

"That's not true! You're not making any sense!"

"Yes it makes perfect sense for both our families to be dead, them, all our friends consumed by maggots on a field once occupied by festive little deer eating grass! We're being punished, it's our fate! Our Father doesn't love us anymore! We're the extra children who couldn't die for a noble cause... BWAHAHA Isn't it FUNNY RABASTAN?"

Without much effort she throws me off. An unnatural strength has come over her and she stands with her dark grey eyes looking wildly about. This glee isn't the girl who came of age years ago or danced with my brother, and held a baby. This is the glee of someone who's crashed a party and is getting away with it.

I'm sprawled on the ground, at a loss as to what to do. We can't go anywhere, in the muggle villagers they will run us out. Obviously we can't go back to the wizarding world. "Maybe we should kill ourselves," I suggest dejectedly.

"Nnoooo ickle Rabastan!" she shrieks unpleasantly, yanking me towards her. "It's their honor... why should we taint it?" She begins stroking my hair, raking her long dirty nails over my skin through the grown out ginger chunks. "This is how it's supposed to be... you and I here... we were wrong not to die, but we're wrong not to go further."

I hold her and she doesn't protest, she just smiles manically from what I can see in the half-light. "You mean... search a way to bring him back?"


	2. Chapter 2

My dear brother in law thinks I'm insane. He's normally so quick to label someone, but I do sincerely believe his reflections on my mental state were accumulated over a very long time. For someone I'm not particularly close to, he's witnessed me on several occasions at my most vulnerable.

"It's mourning Rabastan," I tell him simply one evening as we sit by the fire concocted with a bit of his wandless magic.

"What?" he seems irritated, but his tone reforms into the soft shades one normally uses with the incompetent. He looks as though he might pat my hand, though shies away in the split second he recalls all the times I have say... bitten him for such an offense. "It's the dead of night love," he amends, turning away again and staring into his lap. He's trying to come up with the next brilliant idea as to what we should do with ourselves.

"I mean sadness you dolt!" I watch the fire flicker in his honey brown eyes. So like his brother's, but without Rodolphus's zest for life. I chase the thickness that threatens to seize my voice and continue. My own clause for my rudeness is weak. "I loved your brother very much."

"I know," he tells me with a shrug. "I did too...in a different way mind you." Always so concerned with propriety is he. "It's been a difficult time."

I laugh. The simplicity of that statement is too much. It sums things up yes, but it's so bloody ridiculous. 'Difficulty' before these past few weeks I always equated with say, an exam. A spell. A difficult child. A difficult pet.

I must say that hasn't changed. Were I Christian I could call this Hell. But foreplay with semantics is as equally ridiculous as misuse. Besides I'm already getting that look from Rabastan that tells me my Bohemian ways are grating his poor nerves. I realize my laughter has gotten to the pitch of a wolf's howl and settle down.

"And yet we're still here," I muse. "That says something doesn't it?"

"I suppose." Rabastan stays silent. He seems at odds as to whether I've made a full recovery or this is just the calm before the storm, the storm being where I gnaw off one of his limbs. "Were you...eh serious about bringing back the Dark Lord?"

I stand. My height over his I feel like a guiding shepherd silhouetted against the night. He looks small and childish, his clothes are too big. They're stolen muggle clothes, apparently from the morbidly obese. Stretching I pace around him and the fire, feeling him look down his thin nose at me through the flames. "Yes. I was serious at the time. I didn't know what I was saying..." My tone tapers off, my hand goes to my mouth brushing at the dirt and dried blood there.

"At any rate," I continue, "It seems out of the question."

"Do you believe he's dead?"

"No. The Prophecy has not been fulfilled has it?"

"Ah true. But you don't want to wait for him?" An air of amusement enters my relation's tone. "The woman who nattered on about all the years you spent in Azkaban for him? You've devoted your life to this, why stop now? We've both devoted our lives to this cause, it's not like we've got any marketable job skills? Where are we going to live, among the muggles? Christ Bella use your head." He stands suddenly, arms crossed. I'm still taller than him by about six inches. Small funny little man. The amusement, I dare say, has left him. He's not admitting it but I can tell he's very nervous. This is tearing him apart this uncertainty.

He'd always trade happiness for security. He lived with a woman he didn't love, did everything his ugly family said so he could have their money. Rodolphus was, as you must have been assuming, the direct opposite nearly. He loved his parents, but I knew he loved me more. I could not have tolerated a man who loved anyone over me and he knew that. His mother loathed me as the years went by, my spiteful ovaries couldn't give her boy an heir and all that rot.

Except for Rodolphus they were awful people. They all had this sort of haggard arrogance; sincerely they wished they didn't have to keep telling you they were better, it wore on their dear fragile nerves. Rodolphus though, I can honestly admit I loved over my own family. The Blacks were always closer than we appeared, and our trust ran deeps though it was hard to retrieve. There was a time when I would have died for Sirius, and he for me. But as I said, he gave up a strong alliance and friendship long ago. I don't regret his death.

But my husband was free. Just speaking to him he'd severed a certain tie in his mind, and kept a balance of being both golden son and doing whatever the hell he wanted. I believe that tie would be called respect for his family. He wanted to serve Voldemort as any of us did, but the trick was he did it because he wanted to. If it was hot, he didn't wear clothes. If he wanted a cigarette, even if they were filthy muggle devices and deadly, he smoked one anyway. He didn't give an honest goddamn about his grades at school.

His was the perfect mind set to complement my sixteen year old persona, always vigilante for the world outside her tight knit family. Thinking on all that freedom, I watch Rabastan get pissy because I didn't answer him quick enough. If I were his child I think he would have back-handed me.

I refuse to beg him to pay attention to me as I speak. I wait for him to give me that reproachful look, oh how he just wants to give me one more chance to do the right thing.

"Rabastan, I'm surprised at you," I tell him. His eyes widen. He must've taken my silence as sign of a psychotic attack. But I just sit beside the rock he's perched on pleasantly, crossing my legs and weaving my fingers purposefully. "I seem to remember someone 'nattering' on constantly about pragmatism on more than one occasion. I believe one of my better points in my state before was we are largely unwanted. Voldemort didn't want us, we couldn't be his martyrs to be dredged up by wayward youth looking for someone to follow twenty years from now. Fate's an ugly thing. Our own world we were never apart of, part of a fringe pureblood-supremacy movement. Obviously muggle-fuckers are the majority, and our names were on their press' lips long before the final battle. They know our faces. They presume us dead, and if they find something to the contrary, well they'll correct it. And don't think they won't, we're weak now. Oh come now," I touch his shoulder. He's looking more disheartened by the minute. His spy's defenses are broken. I could tongue his soul if I wanted to. Beautiful horrid little man. "I'm as loathed to admit it as you are," I feel my energy improving. I feel my want to do things other than slop around in my husband's blood returning.

Oh Rodolphus. I know you're guiding me somewhere. This is what you would have wanted. My love you could appreciate this blasphemy like no one else. It would have suited you perfectly to come with us, to be apart of this new scheme and buck everything once and for all.

"But dear we're going to have to do something proactive eventually, I'm not one for sleeping like cattle as you so elegantly put it. We're going to have to integrate into the muggle world." His eyes widen. I think it's my delight at this prospect that startles him. I loathe muggles do I not? I do not. Not particularly.

My beliefs have always fell similar to a muggle who was for segregation. I don't have a problem with them, but I don't want them or their children attending the same school as I. It's distasteful. It's a proven fact that mudbloods just don't get along in our world, or belong. They aren't as apt at magic, and they just spoil good bloodlines. It's silly really. A year ago this would have been a disgusting prospect.

Sleeping in shit in some farmer's fields is a disgusting prospect. Having nothing to eat and diarrhea when one finally does ingest are disgusting prospects. Having nothing to look forward to but Rabastan's company and the memory of my beautiful Rodolphus's thick greenish lips parted in death is a disgusting way to live. Knowing that my life was a waste that cost me my husband is not liveable.

The only thing existing of our marriage now is in my mind (again as loathe as I am to admit it, I have felt it breaking for a very long time), two silver wedding bands divided between a corpse and a crow, and my child's small head stone and coffin at our abandoned manor.

For so long I was regarded as a fool, Severus taught me that much. Such a creature he was, though he knew I had something he did not. I had pride, as cliched as the expression is. I could keep the jail sentence at bay, those times I wanted something to fill the emptiness of being childless... of being alone on a prison floor... because of my arrogance. I held onto the string that one day my side would triumph and idiots like Severus would apologize for doubting me and my master.

It's twice now I've held onto hope. Didn't I say that once you ruin a Black's trust, that's that?

Well Andromeda.

Well Sirius.

Well my Dark Lord.

Rabastan's making noise. Protesting noise. I hear it as nothing but snow on a window. His hand's in mine, my thin dry fingers find their place against his pretty-boy clean skin. I kiss his wrist and laugh at his flabbergasted reaction. "Silly ickle git," I croon playfully. "Mother will take care of you, you'll see. We're going to be just fine, just stay holding my hand. We're going to go wash now, yes. You're very dirty, and so is mummy."

I lead him to where the cows drink, a spring in my step and yanking him along for everything he's worth.

"Bella... Christ.. What're you on about?" His question doesn't deter me from pushing him down on his knees, into the muddy edge of the man-made pond. From him I slip his jacket off, getting a bit of a scramble from it as he tried to retain his garment. It's easy to slip off however, as is his shirt. I told you they were very big after all. His body was skin and muscle in a utilitarian fixture over small furtive bones. His dark mark on his left wrist had faded considerably. Was this a sign?

"Look Rabastan, look at your wrist! He must be dead!"

"That's impossible... goddamn it Bella.. Potter didn't kill him, STOP IT!" he roars at me as I try to bathe him. He scrambles up the hill and I follow him, naturally. In the moonlight I can see the clean streaks in between the dirt that's collected on his skin. I feel that's good enough and return to the pool, letting my silence be ample answer.

Standing over the murky, weed-choked water I slip my robes off into a dark wreath about my feet. From it I step from the center. The water chills my pale skinny ankles, as I'd abandoned shoes some time ago. I continued my pilgrimage into the dirty water without haste, spreading my arms to embrace the water and closing my eyes. The water was at least six feet deep. I am five-ten and opening my eyes, I can see the moonlight through a few good inches of water.

Muffled yelling. Him. I smile in the water ruefully. Now I know why we fell, I joke in my mind, we had the clumsiest spies on the planet. "Bellatrix you fucking fool!" Oh there's that word again. I let him spot me in the water, propelling myself away just as he dives in after me. He's submerged. He's coughing. "Bella...unghhh..." Water shoots out of his mouth. I tread water calmly as I watch him flail. "Please.. Can't.. I can't swim!"

I don't let him die. I couldn't think of another bloated corpse on my account from the Lestrange family. Under his arms proves a good hold to yank him to safety.

He looks at me, vulnerably still coughing up water trying to catch it in his hand like a gentleman. I push him on all fours, giving him a few good smacks on the back to bring it up. I feel no concern as his breath hitches, I've lost interest by the time he discovers he's coughing around a thick piece of pond weed.

"Bella," he taps me on the shoulder to get my attention.

"What?"

"What else have we got?"

"Nothing except this pond to drown ourselves in." He nods. He's out of his element. He's finally taking my lead. Plus I suppose that pond example was just a bit too close for comfort.

"Yes then." He's still coughing dryly.


End file.
